100 Greatest Phillies: 72 – Jimmy Ring

Jimmy Ring might have had a 4.34 ERA, but at the start of the live-ball era, this ERA wasn’t so bad after all. In fact, Ring was better than a league-average pitcher through his entire Phillies career, only slipping up when he returned to Philadelphia for a one-year coffee break in 1928. Then he lost 17 games, and overall he lost a wealth of games for the Phils. But don’t be fooled – Ring played for some of the worst Phillies teams of all time. The Phils acquired him from Cincinnati, by dealing a young pitcher named Eppa Rixey to the Reds. Oops.

Comment: Ring is another of those better-than-average pitchers that are pretty scarce in Phillies history. Though he lost a lot of games, he was never too bad an arm. He’s just a product of a hitter-friendly era, and a player of a really, really bad baseball team.

28 Comments

Joe

January 14, 2009 at 2:55 pm

I see you losers now “sponsor” Johan Santana’s baseball-reference page. Get over the Mets please, geez, it’s like you are obsessed with them. You won the world series, enjoy it. I love how even while the Phillies are winning, they can’t stop talking about the Mets. It’s like an inferiority complex. You guys must just be mad that nobody watched the world series or something…worry about your own team, continuing to obsess over the Mets only makes you look even less classy.

Joe, you and your boyfriend should cuddle under your new Yankees fleece-blanket tonight and just forget all about us Phillies fans..

You are like the 10th “mets” fan to complain about us talking about the Mets… we’re going to be talking about them for a long time, because its simply Amazin’ that a team can self-destruct in two consecutive seasons, and give up their playoff spot to their divison rival.. yet their fans still talk sh!t… its such a rare thing… well, its getting more common lately, but you know what I mean.

so you guys are never going to give your phillies the proper respect and say that they outplayed the Mets at crunch time!! the mets coughed it up huh??? that doesnt really say much about the philly fan base…..most die hards would give their team the respect, i guess you guys see it as the only way to the playoffs is through the mets???

Don’t be mad, we’re just better than you. Our lineup, our bullpen, our ace (the one with a WS MVP)… our city. That’s right… please tell me, if NY is so great why do so many New Yorkers move out of NY? Is it because it smells like trash in NY? Is it because traffic and parking are both unbearable? Or is it because you realized one day, as you were standing next to some Guido from Northern NJ buying a $15 beer, that you were paying $10 more than everyone else in the country? Give me a break… guess how many Muts boards I have posted on? ZERO. Why? Becuase I could care less about the second best team in the NLE! I could care less about the second best team in NY! How long will it be before all of you ass-clowns are back to wearing NY Yankees hats? You know what, we don’t always talk about how the Muts choked… only when you ass-clowns crawl out from under your rocks to talk loud. How ’bout them G-men? Go cry me a river… better yet, go drown in one.

Ya know, Mets fans are like pigeons, they are always somewhere they’re not supposed to be (this site), always dirty as all hell, live in the dirtiest areas of the earth (Shea), and are loud and obnoxious! Rats with wings, I like to call them. what a shame it must be to be a Mets fan though, I truly feel bad. The best chance yous have at winning this division is petitioning to Bud Selig to move to the NL West. Good Luck!

The best part of your point about how we talk about the Mets choking being the reason the Phils made the Playoffs is that that is how bad of a choke job it took that given how bad the Mets played the Phillies still needed to play great to supplant them. Without the Phillies phenomenal run combined with the Mets “ughh, ughh” job they wouldn’t have made it. What a disgrace of a team and city.

chucky….first off, im from brooklyn and i pay a buck for beer…traffic and parking would be unbearable only to those people who are weak and dont have patience….people tend to move away because of the weather, and really looking for a change of pace. and to say cole hammels is better the johan??…i know you would like to think that, and you know what, as a phillies fan you guys should think he’s better….but the reality is that he’s not…that MVP award didnt win him a tirp to cooperstown…!!!(by the way, happens to be in NY).so get off that high horse…..he doesnt even fair all that great against the mets…look at the numbers!!!

If you’re paying a buck for beer in NY you’re probably sipping a Colt 45 next to a three toothed Harlemite… call me impatient but when I am forced to spend a day in NY I cannot wait to get back into PA; the traffic is RIDICULOUS, parking sucks and it smells like trash. Those are the facts.

You know what, you’re right about one thing; that WS MVP didn’t earn him a trip to Cooperstown but it did win US a World F*ing Championship, didn’t it?

By the way, I checked the numbers… Tim and Philliesnation.com sponsors Santana’s Baseball Reference page and it says (and I quote):

you guys sound like yankee fans you guys wanna bring the championships up when your proven wrong….in your case the championship. but go head, talk all the shit ya want…ya deserved all the smack talk for now…

Can’t argue with real Yankee fans… the most storied franchise in all of sports. You have to respect the history that is there. The problem that I have is that most guys that want to rub it in your face and tell you how many championships they’ve won can’t tell you what position Mickey Mantle played or even name the greatest pitcher in NYY franchise history (wanna make one of them guidos look foolish, go ahead and ask them).

The point is that championships are all that matter. We have had that held over our heads for 25 years… yes, we are going to relish the moment and get ours because you never know how long it might be until we win the next one.

Guys, this conversation has nothing to do with the topic, which is Jimmy Ring.

Going back to Ring, I think he’s too high on the ranking.

And Tim, I saw the Santana sponsorship and I’ve got to say, that was kind of lame. The HAHAHAHA part makes us all look a bit juvenile. And since there’s an easy link to Phillies Nation, of course all those angry muts fans are going to come over here. The last thing we need at Phillies Nation are more Mets fans soiling the blog.

One more thing: can we please sign Ben Sheets already? The guy is just dangling out there and I’m sure he can be had for an incentive-laden contract. How’s 1 yr / $2 mil escalating to $12 mil sound? If the guy pitched 200 innings, makes 32 starts, strikes out 200 and wins 20 games, he gets everything… if he goes on the DL after two starts, he gets the low end. $2 mil is a guess, maybe it would take $4 or even more guaranteed, but man… the guy is GREAT when he’s healthy. If we could get him on a heavy incentive contract that COULD pay him like a #1 or #1b starter, i’d be psyched.

The Baseball Reference sponsorship was one of my ideas to boost traffic to the site. Although it worked (Mets fans are so gullible), we will rethink it considering the quantity vs. quality aspects of site visits.

No one’s talking about Jimmy Ring! I was surprised when I saw a bunch of comments for a guy I’ve never heard of. He looks about 70 years old in that picture.

Anyway, I wish we could just ignore obnoxious Mets fans who post on this blog. The Phils are a great team and have really shown in the past two years. They have nothing to prove after winning a championship. The fact that they did it with Utley, Hamels, Rollins and Howard forming the core of the organization shows that Philly can grow its own champions.

New Jersey (probably where you live) is known as the Armpit of America… good try Joe.

Obviously real baseball fans know that Johan Santana is one of the BEST pitchers in baseball probably top 3…. Hamels is younger, and has worked his way into the top 10. I’d still give Santana the nod, and I’ve said so a few times already, but I always wonder for how much longer is Santana going to be better than Hamels… cause Cole is starting to figure things out and put together great stretches.

His 5 games in the postseason were probably the greatest 5 game stretch of any point in his career.

I’m 25 so I couldn’t care less about how many losses the Phillies have total.. I just care about them being good for the past few seasons, and hopefully for the next few seasons..

I think we should also get the David Wright page.. when the time comes

I like Jimmy Ring here. Again, this is part of our history. He played on some bad teams but was respectable, nonetheless. Not sure if the trade for Rixey increases his historical stock value or decreases it. It makes his name more relevant but Rixey was a HOF’er…